A common theme with woman sysadmin that have left the field is that they are tired of the environment. Tired of the macho attitudes. Tired of the put-downs. Tired of having to prove that they are tough enough to be part of the group.
Not quite sexual harassment, but alpha geek males who have something to prove and not enough social skills.
And it is not that they can't compete in this environment. It is more that they get tired of same old sh*t over and over again. They move out of the field into a more supportive environment.
I wish us guys would get our heads out of our backsides. I enjoy working with women. They bring a gentler feel to the group. But I am sure I will get flamed saying that IT is not sexist, that there is no problem and women need to get a thicker skin. And that my friends is exactly the problem.
After asking for a raise and being refused, go look for a new job describing your current skills. When you find one, ask for what you think you are worth. You will likely get close to it. Take the offer back to your current company and see if they will match it. They would be idiots to not match it, but they will probably be idiots.
The job market is expanding at this point. Go for it.
He was an idiot who broke the law by denying his managers and the City of San Francisco access to controlling their network. I don't care how big an Idiot the boss is, you still give them the root password when they directly ask for it. You might hand it over in a sealed envelope with a long lecture on why it is best they not use it, But you still hand it over.
Ahh... nubile young things changing their clothes with the laptop on... Or maybe in bed thinking they are alone or alone with a friend, but the laptop is on...
No wonder the FBI is interested. I wonder when the child pornography charges come out.
As Arlo Guthrie would say:
"...began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that
it was a typical case of American blind justice,
and there wasn't nothing he could do about it"
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
A simple solution to reclaim unused blocks of addresses would be to allow/encourage people/ companies to sell their class B or class C net blocks if they are not using them. I have a class C net block that I do not use. I got it years ago when all you had to do was fill in the form. At the time I got several companies class B net blocks. I suspect that there are many net blocks that were allocated in the late 80;s, early 90's that are not used or are used in a very limited way.
If we allowed people to sell their net blocks like people can sell their domain names on ebay I suspect that many of these unused blocks of addresses would be put back into the pool of available addresses.
Do you know how long it takes to build a data center? In most cases it is years and years. And you have to build it to your eventual maximum size. Guess to small and you have to build another one. Guess to large and you have a lot of expensive floorspace going to waste.
With a data center in a shipping container you and build it in less than 6 months from first thinking of need and having it up and running. Yes it will take another 3 months to plan it, get the funding, find a place to put it and install it.
You can buy your data center in 3200 sq. ft. increments. Maybe have a plan to add one every six months.
You can also depreciate it as equipment rather than facilities.
And finally you can move it on a whim. Tornado in Florida, send it overnight to the Midwest. Flooding in the Midwest send it to New Mexico. To hot in New Mexico, move it to Utah. Cheaper power in Washington state, move it again.
It would also make sense to containerize your chillers as well so you can install/move them both. Then all you need to move it is a flat secure location, power and Internet connectivity.
Of the containerized data centers the sgi (Rackable Systems) ICE Cube Modular Data Center is, IMHO, the best design because they deal with power efficiency in the rack with DC/DC power supplies and they talk about containerized chillers as either part of the container or as a separate container.
The sexist environment is not keeping women out. It is driving them away.
Find a female friend involved with computers and ask them what they think.
I know many female systems administrators that have left the field. And in talking to them the common theme is that they get tired of the macho environment.
To flip the coin how would you as guy feel about working in an environment where: 1) The after hours activities were knitting and quilting and if you missed these activities you were likely to miss important discussions about work. 2) The casual discussion was about how rude men were and their social blunders. 3) Where a casual off color comment was met with a: "tisk, tisk, tisk, we all know how immature men are" 4) Where you were judged by how neat and tidy your desk was: "you know Joe, if you put your papers away it would be so much nicer" 5) Where you were reminded of what a terrible date you would make. 6) You would overhear comments about what a slob you were every time your shirt came un-tucked.
I know that I would leave fairly quickly. I suspect that this is what sexism feels like.
Now these are not the same activities as male sexism but they relate: 1) Lets go the strip club when we get off 2) Comparing the looks, tits, legs of co-workers, girlfriends, stars 3) Casual sexual comments or slang that is sexual in nature 4) When someone talks about how hard something was to do or was a last minute rush being told that "real coders work best in all nighters". 5) Hitting on a coworker 6) Whistles, rude comments, nudges and winks.
It is not that we men are actively turning women away. We create an environment that is not pleasant for women to be around. They get tired of it and they leave. The split is made and we loose something.
We know men are men and we are big and tough. But... It is kind of a drag to work in a department of 5 men in a company with less than 10% women. But hey it is a social gaming site and that is a real sexist environment.
RLH
PS, I will be the first to admit that my female examples are sexist. A woman would have better examples.
When buying a new printer look at the price of the consumables, not the price of the printer unless you are going to be printing less than 100 pages per year. The way the manufactures make money of the cheap printers is by selling cartridges that print a ridiculously small amount of pages. For ink jet printer users that don't print more than a few pages a month that is OK because they dry out or clog before they are empty. But for laser printers and people who regularly print you spend more on the consumables than the printer in the long run.
You talked about a color laser printer. Again look at the price of the color cartridges. Unless you can set your printing to a black and white mode, you will be using more color than you expect.
With all that said, I like the brother printers with their separate drum and toner assemblies. The cost per page is significantly less. ~$90 for 8,000 pages vs HP at ~$185 for 10,000 pages.
Remember it is the price of the consumables that is important, not the price of the printer (IMHO)
What happens if I leave T-Mobile and am no longer a customer? Do they keep my account enabled for seven years so I can view my old online bills? Or do I have to call an operator answer a gazillion questions and then get charged for paper copies?
Does the IRS accept printed copies of the bills as valid receipts?
And how do we know that T-Mobile has not changed the electronic records?
No, Microsoft has never changed their API to break third party implementations (:-).
I think that the EC was very concerned about other OS'es working with Microsoft programs.
Microsoft is trying to push Silverlight as a new industry standard (proprietary open standard?). I would view it as a known monopolist trying to enter a new market with an existing dominate player. Reminds me of like Microsoft Exploder and Netscape a decade or so ago.
But I suspect that Silverlight being able to run external programs will sink it. Sounds like it will be the next attack target. Humm... link an exploit to some porn and what guy can resist. "Allow this program for hotter action"...
Oh yes. The high purity copper and alloy tinned shielding make a *HUGE* difference to my digital audio. I find that it transmits the ones and zeros with much higher and crisper definition. The braided cloth covering really does reduce vibration on the cable. I find my music is much more in tune and never wavers due to cable vibration. I am also sure that the electrons flowing in the right direction for the cable are the reason my is sound bigger with more warmth. And don't get me started on the improved imaging. I now know exactly where the sound is coming from. Fantastic, definitely five stars.
I think these high definition Ethernet cables made as much an improvement as my $100 WattGate IEC power cords did. I am amazed at how replacing 6 feet of power cord can negate the ill effects that hundreds of feet of plain copper house wiring has on my AC power. Truly amazing sound.
I am currently saving up for a set of triple ought (000) 99.999% pure silver speaker cables. I have been told by my audiophile sales person that these cables will allow me to hear the sound before it leaves the speakers. My only concern is that these dual 3/8" diameter cables are a bit heavy for my floor.
I agree with not making it to easy. A trouble ticket system of any type would help. Require your user to submit a trouble ticket each and every time they have a problem. It need not be long or involved. Maybe just what software they are using, what file they are accessing, what the problem is and what the error is. This will do three things:
Require the user to work a little at asking the question,
Give you a message with useful information to help solve the problem,
Give you a record of who is asking what questions.
You can then prioritize the questions: urgent, important and lazy. For the lazy questions you could auto respond with a message saying the question is low priority, you will get to it in the next day or two and give pointers to any self help information available. I suspect that if you are allowed to put a one hour delay into lazy questions, and then respond asking if they solved it themselves you will find most of them resolve themselves.
On the other hand if management really wants you to respond quickly to each question or request they need to budget the staff to do the work. If you assume that each question takes 2 minutes to answer. Remember a single 20 minute answer balances out about 12 or more 30 second answers. So if we average 5 and 10 we get 7.5 questions at 2 minutes a question is 15 staff minutes to answer a real time minute of questions. So... Do you have a helper's staff of 15? If not you are understaffed. The mind set should be call center staffing, not help desk staffing. How many people does it take to answer the call volume.
IMHO what this is really about is changing your users expectations. I suspect you have been giving them prompt painless answers and so rather than go to an online help screen it is easier to just ask the question.
An education point of view to consider is that people tend not to remember easy answers. If they have to look the information up the answer will be more likely to make it to their long term memory.
One of my regrets raising my two daughters, both in their early/mid teens, is that we have been over protective of them. They have lived very protected lives. When they were young, school was a couple of miles away and there were no kids in our neighborhood. They now live in the county so they have to be driven every where. So other than a couple of hours after school, we have complete control over what they do, who they see, who their friends are.
This is how my wife wants it to be. She has bought into the fear factor. "Everything is so much more dangerous these days." "Kids are not safe." "My child might get kidnapped, molested, or killed."
But at age 12 when she was growing up in the California Bay Area, she used to ride her horse 20 miles to the top of skyline not returning all day. When I point this out to her, she says "Oh but that was different, things were safer then."
I don't thing this is true. I think that if you look at the percentages, incidents per 100,000 people, I suspect that the numbers are probably similar to the 1950s and 1960s and better than in in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It is just that the population has increased by an order or more in magnitude and the media picks up each horrible event and makes it front page news. This makes the events seem much more common. "Yikes! Kids are getting raped and murdered every day!"
The regret I have for over protecting my kids is that in a few years they are going to go off to college. This may be the first time they are on their own. I think we have done a good job raising them so I am not too concerned that they will do something to totally screw up their lives. But they will face a lot of temptations. They will make bad choices; drugs, sex, lifestyle, paying attention to school work, etc. My concern is that they will be facing these situations without the security of home an family to moderate their behavior or to act as a protective cushion when they get hurt or in trouble. Yes we are there, but we are not there every night.
And I feel lucky. At least we have talked about sex and birth control. They live in the Sierra foothills in a rather conservative and religious community. I see some of our friends who have raised their kids in an even safer "Just say no" environment and I wonder what their kids are going to do in college. As an older generation used to say, "You know what they say about Catholic girls..."
Kids need to be given chances to make mistakes when they are young so they can learn from them in a loving protective environment.
From the original post: "One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage".
The important point is not to snoop on each and every employee. Rather it is to "understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage". Which seems like a really reasonable thing to do. How can you detect an anomaly on your network when you don't know what normal is. So Joe is accessing the finance database at 10:00 on a Friday night. Is this normal? Yes if Joe works in accounting and has a history of accessing the database late at night when he works from home. No if Joe has a strict history of working 9 to 5. No if Joe works in sales and should not be accessing the finance database. How do you tell if you have no history of what "normal" is.
Now how you do something intelligent with this information is a separate matter. With the problem being that in most organizations there is a lot of legitimate non-normal traffic. If you raise an alarm every time something un-expected happens, your security group will go crazy.
I remember Marcus Ranum once saying in a talk that his biggest problem with installing intrusion detection software was that the customer would turn off the alarms. When he was called back and asked why the intrusion depiction software did not catch the intrusion, he would check the logs, find the alarm event, and discover the alarms turned off. When the customer was asked why the alarms were turned off, the would say "There were so many alarms..."
It is hard work tuning the intrusion dejection software. When an alarm happens, someone needs to look at it. If it is allowed access, then a rule needs to be defined that characterizes the access and allows it so that an alarm will not go off the next time the event happens.
Humm, I have my recovery CD. But I am sitting in front of a Cisco box and I can not find the CD/DVD drive.
If you have followed the case, the central issue has been the Cisco routers on the fiber optic backbone network. And what has been implied is that he disabled all remote authentication and then limited local access to his password. And then to top it off, he did not store the router configuration in flash, so you can't power the router down to do password recovery. If the city cuts the power, they loose the configuration. It is also implied that the city can not find any off-line copies of the router configurations.
Yep, he has the fiber backbone by the balls. Now is he smart enough to let go.
Once the city decides to bite the bullet and pay Cisco consultants to reconfigure the network, then the fact that he has copies of the configs stashed away is not going to matter. The city might want to glance at them, but I doubt that the city would use them directly even after a careful review.
I went to a local meeting of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) last week. The talk was about how we perceive stereo sound. The final demonstration was a mystery box with two "circuits" in it. When he switched a circuit in, there would be a 1/2 second delay, and then we would hear it. So we could know what circuit it was it would light either a red or a blue led would light. The then proceeded to play a series of samples 3 times each, one for each circuit and one plain. He used the circuits and plain in different orders as he was working through various samples. When he was done he asked us what we heard each circuit do to the sound. He specifically ask if there was no difference. Now this was a room with about 40-50 audio industry people. Some were students or interested people like my self, but 2/3 were practicing professionals.
When he asked for comments he got a lot of thoughtful comments and different ideas. I personally thought the red circuit had more room sound and sounded warmer and the blue circuit sounded like the microphone was further back in the room and was more ethereal. Nobody said "no difference".
He then reveled that the circuit was nothing more than a LED selector switch and a 1/2 second mute circuit. Otherwise it was a straight wire as far as the audio is concerned. During the demonstration he went to great lengths to not state that the circuits did anything and he mentioned several times "is there no difference?". A room full of audio professionals and not one got it right. He said he had been giving the demonstration for years and so far only two people had said "no difference". He also said that people thought the red circuit was warmer and the blue circuit was more spacious which agreed with my own perceptions. It was one of the best audio demonstrations I had been to in a long time. I left laughing at myself. I was caught just like all the others.
Your luggage is more cecure than mine. It only has three digits on each lock. And I set them to 000 so that Home Land Securit can search them. Maybe Dibold was thinking about Home Land Security too.
What a really great idea. No, really. It would be the best way to meet the letter of the law while limiting the intent of the law. 1u3hr is correct, lawyers love paper. You can hold it and read it with the naked eye. But in this application it would severely handicap any fishing expeditions.
If you are asked for the records and the lawyer doing discovery can pinpoint the time they are looking for, then they will get the evidence they are looking for. But if the lawyer is fishing for some incriminating data, they will have a hard time finding anything. To the lawyer: "And how many shipping containers of records do you want?".
On the other hand if all of the data is in a machine readable format and they ask for all of the records for the six month period under investigation, then they can use computers to organize and query the data. Slice and dice it into a database, run keyword searches on it, and then query all the related records.
Even worse is if they ask for specific information. I.e. the records for a particular day, user, or host. If that data is on a tape or disk that has a bunch of other data, other hosts or users on the same day or a complete month of data, then you are giving them fish food to wade through. You have to be careful. I suspect that you can't selectively extract the data you hand over. You have to hand over verifiable chunks, like tapes or disks.
Paper is great. They want a month of data. Fine that is only half a 40' shipping container. We will send it to the copy shop and have them duplicate it.
Two cautions though. First, paper can be the only way you store the data. No backup, no archival electronic copies, no support tool stashing the data away, no CDROM in someones desk. If the data is in electronic form, I suspect the requester can demand to get electronic copies. Secondly, paper cuts both ways. If you lawyers are looking for evidence, they will have to wade through the half shipping container of paper.
What a thought. Paper. Meeting the letter of the law while sidestepping the intent of the law.
Slashdot Mirror
And you think hazing is OK? Hazing in a work place environment is stupid not to mention illegal and just asking go get the company sued.
> ... it is also sexist to denigrate things male.
So women have to put up with this crap and that is OK. But to point out the problems with a hostile work place makes me sexist? Get real.
A common theme with woman sysadmin that have left the field is that they are tired of the environment. Tired of the macho attitudes. Tired of the put-downs. Tired of having to prove that they are tough enough to be part of the group.
Not quite sexual harassment, but alpha geek males who have something to prove and not enough social skills.
And it is not that they can't compete in this environment. It is more that they get tired of same old sh*t over and over again. They move out of the field into a more supportive environment.
I wish us guys would get our heads out of our backsides. I enjoy working with women. They bring a gentler feel to the group. But I am sure I will get flamed saying that IT is not sexist, that there is no problem and women need to get a thicker skin. And that my friends is exactly the problem.
After asking for a raise and being refused, go look for a new job describing your current skills. When you find one, ask for what you think you are worth. You will likely get close to it. Take the offer back to your current company and see if they will match it. They would be idiots to not match it, but they will probably be idiots.
The job market is expanding at this point. Go for it.
RLH
He was an idiot who broke the law by denying his managers and the City of San Francisco access to controlling their network.
I don't care how big an Idiot the boss is, you still give them the root password when they directly ask for it. You might hand it over in a sealed envelope with a long lecture on why it is best they not use it, But you still hand it over.
The City owns the network not Terry Childs.
Ahh... nubile young things changing their clothes with the laptop on... Or maybe in bed thinking they are alone or alone with a friend, but the laptop is on...
No wonder the FBI is interested. I wonder when the child pornography charges come out.
RLH
As Arlo Guthrie would say:
"...began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that
it was a typical case of American blind justice,
and there wasn't nothing he could do about it"
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
RLH
A simple solution to reclaim unused blocks of addresses would be to allow/encourage people/ companies to sell their class B or class C net blocks if they are not using them. I have a class C net block that I do not use. I got it years ago when all you had to do was fill in the form. At the time I got several companies class B net blocks. I suspect that there are many net blocks that were allocated in the late 80;s, early 90's that are not used or are used in a very limited way.
If we allowed people to sell their net blocks like people can sell their domain names on ebay I suspect that many of these unused blocks of addresses would be put back into the pool of available addresses.
RLH
Do you know how long it takes to build a data center? In most cases it is years and years. And you have to build it to your eventual maximum size. Guess to small and you have to build another one. Guess to large and you have a lot of expensive floorspace going to waste.
With a data center in a shipping container you and build it in less than 6 months from first thinking of need and having it up and running. Yes it will take another 3 months to plan it, get the funding, find a place to put it and install it.
You can buy your data center in 3200 sq. ft. increments. Maybe have a plan to add one every six months.
You can also depreciate it as equipment rather than facilities.
And finally you can move it on a whim. Tornado in Florida, send it overnight to the Midwest. Flooding in the Midwest send it to New Mexico. To hot in New Mexico, move it to Utah. Cheaper power in Washington state, move it again.
It would also make sense to containerize your chillers as well so you can install/move them both. Then all you need to move it is a flat secure location, power and Internet connectivity.
Of the containerized data centers the sgi (Rackable Systems) ICE Cube Modular Data Center is, IMHO, the best design because they deal with power efficiency in the rack with DC/DC power supplies and they talk about containerized chillers as either part of the container or as a separate container.
Take a look at:
http://www.sgi.com/products/data_center/ice_cube
RLH
> As effective as spitting in the wind.
Well if spitting did not work, Maybe he should use more liquid and try pissing in the wind.
RLH
You can sent them email at:
http://toyota.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/toyota.cfg/php/enduser/ask_intercept.php
You might want to tell them that you are opting out of any of their marketing campaigns.
What were they thinking?
RLH
The sexist environment is not keeping women out. It is driving them away.
Find a female friend involved with computers and ask them what they think.
I know many female systems administrators that have left the field. And in talking to them the common theme is that they get tired of the macho environment.
To flip the coin how would you as guy feel about working in an environment where:
1) The after hours activities were knitting and quilting and if you missed these activities you were likely to miss important discussions about work.
2) The casual discussion was about how rude men were and their social blunders.
3) Where a casual off color comment was met with a: "tisk, tisk, tisk, we all know how immature men are"
4) Where you were judged by how neat and tidy your desk was: "you know Joe, if you put your papers away it would be so much nicer"
5) Where you were reminded of what a terrible date you would make.
6) You would overhear comments about what a slob you were every time your shirt came un-tucked.
I know that I would leave fairly quickly. I suspect that this is what sexism feels like.
Now these are not the same activities as male sexism but they relate:
1) Lets go the strip club when we get off
2) Comparing the looks, tits, legs of co-workers, girlfriends, stars
3) Casual sexual comments or slang that is sexual in nature
4) When someone talks about how hard something was to do or was a last minute rush being told that "real coders work best in all nighters".
5) Hitting on a coworker
6) Whistles, rude comments, nudges and winks.
It is not that we men are actively turning women away. We create an environment that is not pleasant for women to be around. They get tired of it and they leave. The split is made and we loose something.
We know men are men and we are big and tough. But... It is kind of a drag to work in a department of 5 men in a company with less than 10% women. But hey it is a social gaming site and that is a real sexist environment.
RLH
PS, I will be the first to admit that my female examples are sexist. A woman would have better examples.
When getting it first is more important than getting it right.
RLH
When buying a new printer look at the price of the consumables, not the price of the printer unless you are going to be printing less than 100 pages per year. The way the manufactures make money of the cheap printers is by selling cartridges that print a ridiculously small amount of pages. For ink jet printer users that don't print more than a few pages a month that is OK because they dry out or clog before they are empty. But for laser printers and people who regularly print you spend more on the consumables than the printer in the long run.
You talked about a color laser printer. Again look at the price of the color cartridges. Unless you can set your printing to a black and white mode, you will be using more color than you expect.
With all that said, I like the brother printers with their separate drum and toner assemblies. The cost per page is significantly less. ~$90 for 8,000 pages vs HP at ~$185 for 10,000 pages.
Remember it is the price of the consumables that is important, not the price of the printer (IMHO)
RLH
What happens if I leave T-Mobile and am no longer a customer? Do they keep my account enabled for seven years so I can view my old online bills? Or do I have to call an operator answer a gazillion questions and then get charged for paper copies?
Does the IRS accept printed copies of the bills as valid receipts?
And how do we know that T-Mobile has not changed the electronic records?
Questions, questions, questions
RLH
I know the opinion is ringing your bells, but it is just an opinion.
RLH
No, Microsoft has never changed their API to break third party implementations (:-).
I think that the EC was very concerned about other OS'es working with Microsoft programs.
Microsoft is trying to push Silverlight as a new industry standard (proprietary open standard?). I would view it as a known monopolist trying to enter a new market with an existing dominate player. Reminds me of like Microsoft Exploder and Netscape a decade or so ago.
But I suspect that Silverlight being able to run external programs will sink it. Sounds like it will be the next attack target. Humm... link an exploit to some porn and what guy can resist. "Allow this program for hotter action"...
RLH
Does it run under Linux (not Moonlight) and if so is it not a trash port that is wonky with poor performance?
If it does not run under Linux could this be considered an anti-competitive move by Microsoft to keep Linux out of the desktop or netbook market?
Inquiring minds want to know
RLH
Oh yes. The high purity copper and alloy tinned shielding make a *HUGE* difference to my digital audio. I find that it transmits the ones and zeros with much higher and crisper definition. The braided cloth covering really does reduce vibration on the cable. I find my music is much more in tune and never wavers due to cable vibration. I am also sure that the electrons flowing in the right direction for the cable are the reason my is sound bigger with more warmth. And don't get me started on the improved imaging. I now know exactly where the sound is coming from. Fantastic, definitely five stars.
I think these high definition Ethernet cables made as much an improvement as my $100 WattGate IEC power cords did. I am amazed at how replacing 6 feet of power cord can negate the ill effects that hundreds of feet of plain copper house wiring has on my AC power. Truly amazing sound.
I am currently saving up for a set of triple ought (000) 99.999% pure silver speaker cables. I have been told by my audiophile sales person that these cables will allow me to hear the sound before it leaves the speakers. My only concern is that these dual 3/8" diameter cables are a bit heavy for my floor.
Al Phile
"More money than brains"
I agree with not making it to easy. A trouble ticket system of any type would help. Require your user to submit a trouble ticket each and every time they have a problem. It need not be long or involved. Maybe just what software they are using, what file they are accessing, what the problem is and what the error is. This will do three things:
Require the user to work a little at asking the question,
Give you a message with useful information to help solve the problem,
Give you a record of who is asking what questions.
You can then prioritize the questions: urgent, important and lazy. For the lazy questions you could auto respond with a message saying the question is low priority, you will get to it in the next day or two and give pointers to any self help information available. I suspect that if you are allowed to put a one hour delay into lazy questions, and then respond asking if they solved it themselves you will find most of them resolve themselves.
On the other hand if management really wants you to respond quickly to each question or request they need to budget the staff to do the work. If you assume that each question takes 2 minutes to answer. Remember a single 20 minute answer balances out about 12 or more 30 second answers. So if we average 5 and 10 we get 7.5 questions at 2 minutes a question is 15 staff minutes to answer a real time minute of questions. So... Do you have a helper's staff of 15? If not you are understaffed. The mind set should be call center staffing, not help desk staffing. How many people does it take to answer the call volume.
IMHO what this is really about is changing your users expectations. I suspect you have been giving them prompt painless answers and so rather than go to an online help screen it is easier to just ask the question.
An education point of view to consider is that people tend not to remember easy answers. If they have to look the information up the answer will be more likely to make it to their long term memory.
One of my regrets raising my two daughters, both in their early/mid teens, is that we have been over protective of them. They have lived very protected lives. When they were young, school was a couple of miles away and there were no kids in our neighborhood. They now live in the county so they have to be driven every where. So other than a couple of hours after school, we have complete control over what they do, who they see, who their friends are.
This is how my wife wants it to be. She has bought into the fear factor. "Everything is so much more dangerous these days." "Kids are not safe." "My child might get kidnapped, molested, or killed."
But at age 12 when she was growing up in the California Bay Area, she used to ride her horse 20 miles to the top of skyline not returning all day. When I point this out to her, she says "Oh but that was different, things were safer then."
I don't thing this is true. I think that if you look at the percentages, incidents per 100,000 people, I suspect that the numbers are probably similar to the 1950s and 1960s and better than in in the early 1900s or late 1800s. It is just that the population has increased by an order or more in magnitude and the media picks up each horrible event and makes it front page news. This makes the events seem much more common. "Yikes! Kids are getting raped and murdered every day!"
The regret I have for over protecting my kids is that in a few years they are going to go off to college. This may be the first time they are on their own. I think we have done a good job raising them so I am not too concerned that they will do something to totally screw up their lives. But they will face a lot of temptations. They will make bad choices; drugs, sex, lifestyle, paying attention to school work, etc. My concern is that they will be facing these situations without the security of home an family to moderate their behavior or to act as a protective cushion when they get hurt or in trouble. Yes we are there, but we are not there every night.
And I feel lucky. At least we have talked about sex and birth control. They live in the Sierra foothills in a rather conservative and religious community. I see some of our friends who have raised their kids in an even safer "Just say no" environment and I wonder what their kids are going to do in college. As an older generation used to say, "You know what they say about Catholic girls..."
Kids need to be given chances to make mistakes when they are young so they can learn from them in a loving protective environment.
From the original post:
"One thing companies can start doing is monitoring their networks on an ongoing basis so that they understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage".
The important point is not to snoop on each and every employee. Rather it is to "understand the normal pattern of data flow and usage". Which seems like a really reasonable thing to do. How can you detect an anomaly on your network when you don't know what normal is. So Joe is accessing the finance database at 10:00 on a Friday night. Is this normal? Yes if Joe works in accounting and has a history of accessing the database late at night when he works from home. No if Joe has a strict history of working 9 to 5. No if Joe works in sales and should not be accessing the finance database. How do you tell if you have no history of what "normal" is.
Now how you do something intelligent with this information is a separate matter. With the problem being that in most organizations there is a lot of legitimate non-normal traffic. If you raise an alarm every time something un-expected happens, your security group will go crazy.
I remember Marcus Ranum once saying in a talk that his biggest problem with installing intrusion detection software was that the customer would turn off the alarms. When he was called back and asked why the intrusion depiction software did not catch the intrusion, he would check the logs, find the alarm event, and discover the alarms turned off. When the customer was asked why the alarms were turned off, the would say "There were so many alarms ..."
It is hard work tuning the intrusion dejection software. When an alarm happens, someone needs to look at it. If it is allowed access, then a rule needs to be defined that characterizes the access and allows it so that an alarm will not go off the next time the event happens.
Humm, I have my recovery CD. But I am sitting in front of a Cisco box and I can not find the CD/DVD drive.
If you have followed the case, the central issue has been the Cisco routers on the fiber optic backbone network. And what has been implied is that he disabled all remote authentication and then limited local access to his password. And then to top it off, he did not store the router configuration in flash, so you can't power the router down to do password recovery. If the city cuts the power, they loose the configuration. It is also implied that the city can not find any off-line copies of the router configurations.
Yep, he has the fiber backbone by the balls. Now is he smart enough to let go.
Once the city decides to bite the bullet and pay Cisco consultants to reconfigure the network, then the fact that he has copies of the configs stashed away is not going to matter. The city might want to glance at them, but I doubt that the city would use them directly even after a careful review.
I went to a local meeting of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) last week. The talk was about how we perceive stereo sound. The final demonstration was a mystery box with two "circuits" in it. When he switched a circuit in, there would be a 1/2 second delay, and then we would hear it. So we could know what circuit it was it would light either a red or a blue led would light. The then proceeded to play a series of samples 3 times each, one for each circuit and one plain. He used the circuits and plain in different orders as he was working through various samples. When he was done he asked us what we heard each circuit do to the sound. He specifically ask if there was no difference. Now this was a room with about 40-50 audio industry people. Some were students or interested people like my self, but 2/3 were practicing professionals.
When he asked for comments he got a lot of thoughtful comments and different ideas. I personally thought the red circuit had more room sound and sounded warmer and the blue circuit sounded like the microphone was further back in the room and was more ethereal. Nobody said "no difference".
He then reveled that the circuit was nothing more than a LED selector switch and a 1/2 second mute circuit. Otherwise it was a straight wire as far as the audio is concerned. During the demonstration he went to great lengths to not state that the circuits did anything and he mentioned several times "is there no difference?". A room full of audio professionals and not one got it right. He said he had been giving the demonstration for years and so far only two people had said "no difference". He also said that people thought the red circuit was warmer and the blue circuit was more spacious which agreed with my own perceptions. It was one of the best audio demonstrations I had been to in a long time. I left laughing at myself. I was caught just like all the others.
RLH
A former Rock and Roll Sound Guy
Your luggage is more cecure than mine. It only has three digits on each lock.
And I set them to 000 so that Home Land Securit can search them. Maybe Dibold
was thinking about Home Land Security too.
RLH
What a really great idea. No, really. It would be the best way to meet the letter of the law while limiting the intent of the law. 1u3hr is correct, lawyers love paper. You can hold it and read it with the naked eye. But in this application it would severely handicap any fishing expeditions.
If you are asked for the records and the lawyer doing discovery can pinpoint the time they are looking for, then they will get the evidence they are looking for. But if the lawyer is fishing for some incriminating data, they will have a hard time finding anything. To the lawyer: "And how many shipping containers of records do you want?".
On the other hand if all of the data is in a machine readable format and they ask for all of the records for the six month period under investigation, then they can use computers to organize and query the data. Slice and dice it into a database, run keyword searches on it, and then query all the related records.
Even worse is if they ask for specific information. I.e. the records for a particular day, user, or host. If that data is on a tape or disk that has a bunch of other data, other hosts or users on the same day or a complete month of data, then you are giving them fish food to wade through. You have to be careful. I suspect that you can't selectively extract the data you hand over. You have to hand over verifiable chunks, like tapes or disks.
Paper is great. They want a month of data. Fine that is only half a 40' shipping container. We will send it to the copy shop and have them duplicate it.
Two cautions though. First, paper can be the only way you store the data. No backup, no archival electronic copies, no support tool stashing the data away, no CDROM in someones desk. If the data is in electronic form, I suspect the requester can demand to get electronic copies. Secondly, paper cuts both ways. If you lawyers are looking for evidence, they will have to wade through the half shipping container of paper.
What a thought. Paper. Meeting the letter of the law while sidestepping the intent of the law.
RLH